How Old Is My House? How to Find the Year Built, and How Old US Homes Are

How old is my house? Six records that date it, from most to least exact

No single record settles a build year. Assessor files are the fastest lookup, permits and title abstracts are the most exact where they exist, and fixture stamps only set a floor.

• Assessor or property appraiser record. Search your parcel by address and read the year built field. Definitions differ: in Sarasota County, Florida it is the year a structure was completed for assessment purposes as set by a deputy of the appraiser's office; in Lee County, South Carolina it is the actual year of construction if known, otherwise an estimate; in Gunnison County, Colorado it is the year the construction permit was initiated.
• Original building permit. The Library of Congress house history guide says permits sit with the city or county building department, searchable by address, permit number or parcel number, and that not every builder was required to file one.
• Deed chain and abstract of title. The recorder of deeds or county clerk holds the ownership timeline. A sale date is not a build date, but the National Park Service guide to researching a historic property lists built dates and alterations among what abstracts and permits can yield.
• Fire insurance maps and city directories. Sanborn maps, made since 1867, show building footprints lot by lot; the Library of Congress digital set runs from 1867 to 1970. A house on one map and absent from the previous edition was most likely built between the two.
• Stamps on original fixtures. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission points to the inside wall of the toilet tank and the underside of the lid for a manufacture year. On a water heater, one maker, Bradford White, encodes the year and month of manufacture in the first two characters of the serial number on the rating plate. A replaced fixture is newer than the house, so a stamp sets only a lower bound on the home's age.
• Census figures for your area. These do not date any single house, but they tell you whether your home is old for its state or county. The full state table is below.

Effective year built: An appraisal figure, not a construction date. Lee County, South Carolina, keeps it equal to the year built unless major rehabilitation or remodeling has been done; Indiana's assessment glossary defines effective age by comparing a structure with similar structures. A remodeled 1940s house can carry a much later effective year.

The Census year-built number is a household's estimate, asked in decade boxes

Every state and county figure in this report comes from one questionnaire item. Its wording and its known weakness shape how far the numbers can be pushed.

The 2025 American Community Survey asks: "About when was this building first built?" Respondents tick a box: 2020 or later (with the exact year), 2010 to 2019, 2000 to 2009, then one box per decade back to 1939 or earlier (ACS 2025 questionnaire, housing question 2).

The Census Bureau's own definition says year built refers to when the building was first constructed, not when it was remodeled, added to or converted. It also warns that the item is more prone to response error than most questions, because respondents rely on memory or on estimates from long-time neighbors (ACS 2025 Subject Definitions).

New York's median home dates to 1959, Nevada's to 1998

Across the 50 states, the median year built spans 39 years in the ACS 2025 1-year data. The oldest stock is in the Northeast; the youngest is in Nevada, Texas, Utah and other Southern and Western states.

New York's median home was built in 1959 (MOE 1 year), making it 66 years old in 2025. The District of Columbia ties at 1959. Rhode Island (1964) and Massachusetts (1965) follow. At the young end, Nevada's median is 1998 (27 years), Texas's 1996 and Utah's 1995 (ACS 2025 1-year, B25035).

The national median for all 148,228,967 housing units is 1982, or 43 years. NAHB's March 2026 analysis of the 2024 ACS put owner-occupied homes alone at 42 years; that is a narrower universe that leaves out rentals and vacant units (NAHB Eye On Housing).

24.3% of US homes are 30 to 49 years old, and Alaska leads at 40.3%

Median age says little about the homes most likely to still have their first kitchen and bathrooms. This KBR estimate counts the homes built 1976 to 1995, which were 30 to 49 years old in 2025.

About 36.0 million US homes, 24.3% of the stock (MOE about 0.1 percentage point), fall in the 30 to 49 year band. Alaska stands apart at 40.3% (MOE 1.6 points), well ahead of Hawaii (31.3%), New Mexico (31.2%), Arizona (31.1%), Florida (30.5%), Nevada (30.1%).

The ranking does not follow median age. Texas has one of the youngest medians (1996) but only 24.0% of its homes in the band, because so much of its stock is newer still. New York has the lowest state share, 14.1%, because most of its homes are older than 49; DC is lower again at 7.9%. 27 states sit above the national share.

ACS counts homes by decade, so the 1970s and 1990s decades are split using Census counts of housing units completed in each region: in the US, 39.7% of 1970s completions came in 1976 to 1979 and 55.7% of 1990s completions in 1990 to 1995 (Census New Residential Construction). With a flat split instead, the national share is 24.8% and no state moves more than 6 places.

Kitchen remodels run highest in homes built in the 1970s and 1980s

The American Housing Survey asks owners which projects they did in the past two years. Read by the decade a home was built, it shows where remodeling concentrates.

In the 2023 AHS, 7.3% of owner-occupied homes built in the 1970s and 7.3% of those built in the 1980s remodeled a kitchen in the two-year window, against 2.0% for homes built in 2010 or later. Bathroom remodels peak at 10.9% for 1980s homes; for homes built in 2010 or later the rate is 2.6%. In 2023, 1970s homes were 44 to 53 years old and 1980s homes 34 to 43, which overlaps the 30 to 49 year band used above (AHS 2023 PUF, KBR tabulation).

The 1970s and 1980s kitchen rates are identical at 7.3%, and the 1960s and 1990s rates sit below them, so the peak is a plateau across two decades rather than a single age. For cost ranges see bathroom remodel cost, for scheduling see the kitchen remodel timeline, and for national remodel totals see home improvement statistics.

St. Louis city has the oldest homes of any large county; Hays County, Texas, the newest

Among the 1,773 counties with 10,000 or more housing units in the ACS 2020 to 2024 5-year data, the oldest medians are in New York, Pennsylvania and large older cities; most of the ten youngest are in Texas.

St. Louis city's median falls in the open-ended 1939 or earlier box: 57.9% of its 174,111 homes were built before 1940. Kings County (Brooklyn) follows with a median of 1944. Hays County, Texas, has the newest median, 2007, with 42.6% of homes built since 2010. Six of the ten youngest large counties are in Texas; the others are in Iowa, Florida, Georgia and Utah (ACS 2020 to 2024 5-year, B25035).

The median of all 1,773 large-county medians is 1982, which matches the 2025 national median. County figures pool five years of interviews, so they are not directly comparable with the single-year state figures above.

The typical US home aged 5 years in the decade to 2025

New construction has not kept pace with the calendar. The median year built moves forward about half a year for every year that passes.

The national median year built was 1976 in the 2014 ACS and 1981 in the 2024 ACS, so median age rose from 38 to 43 years. On the newest pair, 1977 in 2015 and 1982 in 2025, it rose from 38 to 43: 0.5 years of age per calendar year. The stock grew by 13,435,302 units (10.0%) over the same decade, not enough to pull the median forward year for year.

Homes built in 2010 or later make up 14.9% of the 2025 stock. Questions about materials common in particular eras are covered in when lead paint was banned, polybutylene pipe and how long toilets last.

State-by-state findings

1. The median US home was built in 1982 and was 43 years old in 2025 (ACS 2025 1-year, MOE 1 year).^[1]
2. KBR estimates 24.3% of US housing units, about 36.0 million, were 30 to 49 years old in 2025 (built 1976 to 1995).^[1][9]
3. Alaska has the highest share of homes 30 to 49 years old, 40.3% in 2025, followed by Hawaii at 31.3%.^[1][9]
4. New York has the lowest state share in the 30 to 49 year band, 14.1% in 2025; DC is 7.9%.^[1][9]
5. New York's median home was built in 1959, the oldest of any state in 2025; DC ties at 1959.^[1]
6. Nevada's median home was built in 1998, the youngest state stock in 2025, 27 years old.^[1]
7. State medians spanned 39 years in 2025, from 1959 in New York to 1998 in Nevada.^[1]
8. The national median age rose from 38 years in the 2014 ACS to 43 in the 2024 ACS, and from 38 to 43 between 2015 and 2025.^[3][1]
9. St. Louis city, Missouri, is the only county with 10,000+ homes whose median falls in the 1939 or earlier box (ACS 2020 to 2024); 57.9% of its homes predate 1940.^[2]
10. Hays County, Texas, has the newest median among large counties, 2007, with 42.6% of homes built in 2010 or later (ACS 2020 to 2024).^[2]
11. In 2023, 7.3% of owner-occupied homes built in the 1970s and 7.3% built in the 1980s remodeled a kitchen within two years, against 2.0% of homes built in 2010 or later (AHS).^[10]
12. Bathroom remodels peaked at 10.9% for owner-occupied homes built in the 1980s in the 2023 AHS.^[10]
13. The Census Bureau says year built is more prone to response error than most ACS items because respondents rely on memory or neighbors' estimates (2025 Subject Definitions).^[4]
14. County assessors define year built differently: completion for assessment (Sarasota County, Florida), actual or estimated construction year (Lee County, South Carolina), or permit start (Gunnison County, Colorado).^[14][15][16]

Rankings and ratios we derived

Download the calculations (CSV)

Executive summary

• Start with the assessor's year built field, but check how your county defines it: completion, permit start or an estimate.
• Permits and title abstracts are the most exact records where they exist; fixture stamps set only a lower bound.
• The median US home was built in 1982; it was 43 years old in 2025.
• KBR estimates 24.3% of homes, about 36.0 million, were 30 to 49 years old in 2025; Alaska leads at 40.3%.
• New York (1959) has the oldest state median and Nevada (1998) the youngest.
• Kitchen remodels in the 2023 AHS were most common in homes built in the 1970s and 1980s (7.3% each) and rarest in homes built since 2010 (2.0%).
• Between 2015 and 2025 the median home aged 5 years, about 0.5 years per calendar year.

Frequently asked questions

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Reproduce this analysis

Every figure comes from the files below. The scripts that pulled and computed them are kept with the report and can be re-run.

Data quality and exclusions

• Puerto Rico removed: 1 state-level row (ACS 2025 1-year) and its 78 municipios (5-year county file), because the brief covers the 50 states and DC.
• Counties below 10,000 housing units removed from the extremes lists: 1,371 of 3,144 counties.
• Bottom-coded medians (value 1938, MOE code -333333333) relabelled "1939 or earlier": 4 counties in all, 1 among counties with 10,000+ units (St. Louis city).
• Decade bands checked: for every state and county, the ten B25034 bands sum exactly to the B25034 total (assertion in scripts/02_compute_atlas.py).
• AHS: 55,669 household records filtered to 28,192 occupied owner-occupied homes; quote characters stripped from PUF codes.
• 2020 skipped in the national series: the ACS 2020 summary file directory has no standard 1-year data folder.

Methodology

Source selection: the American Community Survey is the only federal source with year built for every state and county each year. State and national figures use the newest 1-year release (2025, published 2026-10-29); counties use the newest 5-year release (2020 to 2024, published 2026-01-29), because 1-year data cover only areas of 65,000 or more people. All files were read from the Census Bureau's table-based and sequence-based summary files; the Census Data API was not used because it now requires a key.

Inclusion and exclusion: Puerto Rico is excluded from state and county lists. Counties with fewer than 10,000 housing units are excluded from the extremes (1,371 of 3,144) because small samples give wide medians. Medians shown as 1938 with an MOE code of -333333333 are treated as "1939 or earlier". Ties are broken by the share built 1939 or earlier (oldest list) or 2010 or later (youngest list).

Derived metrics: the 30 to 49 year share splits the 1970s and 1990s ACS decades with Census counts of new privately-owned housing units completed by region (1976 to 1979 of the 1970s, 1990 to 1995 of the 1990s); each state uses its Census region's weights and the US figure is the sum of state counts. MOEs for the share use the Census approximation for derived proportions. AHS remodel rates use the 2023 national PUF, owner-occupied homes, kitchen job type 13 and bathroom job type 12, with 90% MOEs from 160 replicate weights.

Conflicting numbers: ACS (all housing units) and NAHB (owner-occupied homes) medians differ by design; both are reported with their universe. HomeSnacks and others quote ACS 2024; this report uses ACS 2025.

Limitations are listed below. Date of last update: 2026-11-01.

This report presents published data with its limitations. It is not legal, financial or investment advice.

Sources, ranked by quality

Tier 1: primary and official sources (19)

• [1] U.S. Census Bureau. ACS 2025 1-year table-based Summary File, tables B25034 and B25035. 2025 (released 2026-10-29). Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [2] U.S. Census Bureau. ACS 2020-2024 5-year table-based Summary File, tables B25034 and B25035. 2020 to 2024 (released 2026-01-29). Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [3] U.S. Census Bureau. ACS 1-year Summary Files 2013 to 2024 (sequence files 2013 to 2019, table-based 2021 to 2024), B25034 and B25035. 2013 to 2024. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [4] U.S. Census Bureau. 2025 ACS Subject Definitions: Year Structure Built. 2025. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [5] U.S. Census Bureau. 2025 ACS questionnaire, housing question 2. 2025. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [6] U.S. Census Bureau. 2025 ACS Data Release Schedule. updated 2026-10-29. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [7] U.S. Census Bureau. 2024 ACS Data Release Schedule. updated 2025-12-04. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [8] U.S. Census Bureau. Understanding and using ACS 1-year and 5-year estimates. current. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [9] U.S. Census Bureau. New Residential Construction historical series: New privately-owned housing units completed (annual, by region). 1968 to 2025. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [10] U.S. Census Bureau and HUD. 2023 American Housing Survey National Public Use File v1.1. 2023. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [11] Library of Congress. House History research guide: Building Permits, Deeds, and Property Taxes. current. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [12] Library of Congress. House History research guide: Maps and Atlases; City and Telephone Directories. current. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [13] National Park Service. National Register Bulletin 39: Researching a Historic Property. 1991, revised 1998. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [14] Sarasota County Property Appraiser (Florida). Glossary (Year Built, Actual Year Built, Effective Year Built). current. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [15] Lee County Assessor, South Carolina (qPublic). Field definitions (Year Built, Effective Year Built). current. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [16] Gunnison County Assessor (Colorado). Data Definitions for Building Attributes file. current. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [17] Indiana Department of Local Government Finance. Real Property Assessment Guidelines glossary (actual age, effective age). 2011. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [18] San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. How to Find the Flush Volume for a Toilet. current. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [21] U.S. Census Bureau. ACS summary file 2020 data directory listing. listing viewed 2026-11-01. Accessed 2026-11-01.

Tier 2: trade bodies, market research, company data (2)

• [19] Bradford White Corporation. Warranty FAQ: serial number date code. current. Accessed 2026-11-01.
• [20] National Association of Home Builders. Age of Housing Stock by State (Eye On Housing, 2026-03-25). 2026-03-25. Accessed 2026-11-01.